The Friendships of Women

While gathering materials for a History of Friendship, I was often struck both by the small number of recorded examples of the sentiment among women, which were discovered in my...

When the fallen torch of ambition has smouldered into blackness, we ought to make the eternal star of religion our guide. To take spiritual treasures away without replacing them...

The poor young Niebuhr writes home from Great Britain to Madam Hensler, the wife of the good professor who had befriended him in college, "Your letter has made me so wild with d...

Few inquiries can have greater interest or importance than the inquiry, why there is not more generally between parents and children that warm, ingenuous, abiding affection whic...

Theodosia set sail from Charleston in a little vessel, which was never heard of again. It was supposed to have foundered off Cape Hatteras. The loss of his daughter, Burr said,...

Perhaps his better traits nowhere shine out with such steady lustre as in the constancy of glowing tenderness with which, in all his wanderings, woes, and glory, he cherished th...

It is to be presumed that those who enter into a relation with each other on which so much of their destiny is staked, take the step under the influence of love. And by love the...

And yet, profound as is the misfortune, sharp as is the suffering of such, it may be doubted whether a noble, sensitive, cultivated man, with a yearning heart of softness and pe...

Yet a word of protest is called for against those exaggerated sensational statements on this subject, so persistently forced on public attention by well-meaning but mistaken per...

"Better and safer, of course, are such friendships, where disparities of years or circumstances put the idea of love out of the question. Middle life has rarely the advantage yo...

The inner history of the Catholic Church, so wealthy in many departments of experience, is especially rich in an original class of profound friendships of men and women, friends...

She draws her own likeness under the name of Sappho. In this work, the pictures, incidents, and conversations reflect a state of society, in which "the degrees and shades of fri...

Lady Hesketh, ever a true angel, came and dwelt with the afflicted pair. And when Cowper, after four wretched years of separation, plunged, as he expressed it, in deeps unvisite...

Several instances are recorded in the memoirs of Theodore Parker. His friendship with Miss Frances Power Cobbe is particularly worthy of notice. She wrote her gratitude to him f...

In addition to sketches of her by different hands, we possess five volumes, drawn chiefly from her own pen and edited by her husband, containing records of her thoughts, portrai...

De Tocqueville pronounced an exquisite eulogy by the grave of Ballanche, in the name of the Academy. La Prade, in the funeral address he delivered at Lyons, the birthplace of th...

The injustice of the popular view of Comte's character, in its deepest truth, as hard, coarse, despotic, is shown by his favorite aphorisms. "Live for others." "Disinterested lo...

It was the greatness, not the weakness, of Lacordaire, that, before loving God, he had loved glory. Few men have spirit enough truly to seek fame: it is notice which they wish....

Grace Aguilar has written a work expressly on the subject of Woman's Friendship. Though not a work of a high order, it possesses considerable interest as a tale; and, as a treat...

'Twas he that rescued gasping friendship, when The bell tolled for her funeral with men: 'Twas he that made friends more than lovers burn, And then made love to sacred friendshi...

She also published, in a little volume by itself, an enthusiastic poem in praise of the Cambrian Arden, Llangollen Valley, adorned with an engraving of the landscape as seen fro...

Miss Aikin also held a constant intercourse, through a large part of her life, with Joanna Baillie, whom she always regarded with profound honor and love. She had a personal acq...

From the most dangerous and deteriorating influences of her position she found a safeguard in active works of charity. Her pecuniary generosity, in her days of opulence, was bou...

The best example, in a relation with one of her own sex, of that sentiment of friendship which was such a pervasive need of Madame Swetchine's nature, and which she experienced...

Such a woman is the highest exemplar and benefactor of her sex. A religious quality is evoked in the soul that contemplates her. Every impure feeling is struck dead with awe bef...

Granting, however, that women have less spiritual force than men, they certainly have greater fineness. Their smaller volume of power is compensated by their greater delicacy an...

Lamartine says of the Armenians, with whom he was intimate at Damascus, "I could not turn my eyes from these beautiful and graceful women. Our visits and conversations were ever...

Another duty, closely allied with the foregoing, and especially incumbent on the finest and highest women, is to improve the common standard of good manners. This is a region of...